Google has rolled out many visual updates to Search Console which are designed to offer more context to data which is included in reports. The visual update comprises:-

• Annotation Cards: Fly over bullet points in the error report to learn more about the problem detected on that specific date.
• Difference Column: It shows how data has changed over a time period.
• Filter/Compare: This has been redesigned with a new look and pre-populated values
• Overall improvements to the date picker and comparison window

Google has confirmed that a major core algorithm update was released last week. Such an update occurs many times in a year which might bring one or more changes to search results. Google didn’t specify as to what changes had been implemented since it could be anything from changes aimed at specific enhancements, to broad changes which can affect all search results.

Sights can witness or improve as a result of the changes which have occurred which Google says is normal. It sounds as though rankings can fluctuate according to the way pages should be ranking before this update. In case your rankings drop after this update, Google states that there is no particular “fix” other than to keep “building great content”.

Google’s AMP(Accelerated Mobile Page) team has launched a new feature named Render on Idle. It has been specifically designed for increasing ad impressions per page by speeding up ad load when an ad is increased ad impressions per page by speeding up ad load when a user doesn’t take action on any user.

Render on Idle is available to publishers who are using DoubleClick AMP ad tag or any ad network which implements Fast Fetch, an AMP-specific mechanism which lowers the likelihood that users will see empty ad slots for allowing ad requests to happen since page count is rendering. Ads render just before the ad slot is in view.

The AMP team has stated that publishers testing the feature has seen an increase in impressions per page and offers just .5% increase in clicks and viewable queries by being able to provide ads when a user’s browser is idle with Render on Idle. Publishers who are sensitive to viewability rate need to set data-loading strategy for keeping current viewport offset & disable idle render.

In a webmaster Hangout, Google’s John Mueller discouraged the use of Google Search Console’s URL Submit Tool. He also mentioned interesting facts about how Google indexes websites. He suggested interesting ways to ensure that new content is crawled properly and indexed first.

John Mueller addressed the common problem of Google not picking up content as promptly as a publisher wants to. He blamed publishers for this problem. If Google isn’t indexing your content, then it isn’t Google fault. It is the publishers fault in case it isn’t indexed and the publisher needs to find out the reason why it’s not being indexed.

John Mueller provided a number of suggestions for identifying the reasons behind Google not indexing content and provide solutions to ensure Google indexes it.

Google’s Gary Illyes has stated that a substantial number of sites will migrate to mobile first index in the next month & half. He also announced Google’s upcoming plans for mobile-first index.

The last official announcement from Google about mobile-first indexing was during last summer, when Google’s John Mueller stated it was rolled out for individual sites which were ready. They initially planned to ensure that all sites migrated to mobile-first index by the start of 2018. However, the goal hasn’t been met.

Google has also stated that it won’t announce when migration to mobile-first index is complete. But after Illyes’s keynote at Pubcoin, it has become clear that the new index might never be rolled out for all sites.

Google has discontinued its support for news meta keywords tag. They introduced the new meta keywords tag particularly for news publishers in 2012 and discontinued supporting it a few months ago. Since Google didn’t announce about this change, publishers have continued using it. Usage of news meta keywords tag won’t help Google to understand the content of your news. This is because Google ignores it in the same way they ignore normal meta keywords tag. Though keeping them on pages is fine, Google doesn’t use it for Google News as it used to.